A blog for passing time, and passing messages about media, about media ecology which is the study of media environments, about language and symbols, about technology, about communication, about consciousness, about culture, about life and the universe, about everything and nothing, about time...

Thursday, April 5, 2018

If Not A Then E (Studio Version)

So previously here on Blog Time Passing I posted my 2013 Keynote Address to the Media Ecology Association, a version of a talk I had first given at an Institute of General Semantics symposium. If you somehow missed it, here's the link: My MEA Keynote (If Not A Then E).

That address, "If Not A, Then E," includes a creative use of PowerPoint, at least I think so, and in fact that was a key element of the talk. The recording of the keynote captures much of the visual presentation in the background, but not all of it. And the PowerPoint is the main point, visually speaking, you don't really need to look at me at all, you just need to hear me talk.

As a live event, that recording also includes my friend Thom Gencarelli introducing me, and the question and answer session that followed.

My friend Ed Tywoniak liked the address so much that he said he wanted to produce a video version. It took a few years to get around to it, but a little over a year ago, March of 2017, he had me over to his school, Saint Mary's College of California, as a Disney Forum Fellow (that's the Roy E. and Patricia Disney Forum), and one of the goals was to convert the PowerPoint to video, with me doing the voiceover.There were some challenges in making the conversion. You would think it would be easy enough, but there tends to be a loss of visual definition or quality in making the transfer from PowerPoint to video. To avoid that, this version does not include some of the transitions which were part of the overall aesthetic of the presentation. Still and all, Ed's students, Ryan Moran and Sean Wagner, did an outstanding job in putting together the video, setting up the sound recording, and putting it all together. The end result comes in at 28 minutes, as there is no one introducing me as a speaker, and no Q&A session. And here it is:I'll share some other videos that came out of my visit another time. For now, this is me, signing off, from here on E-world.